Although Zimbabwe previously exported food, now approximately 7 million Zimbabweans are dependent on external food aid. 75% of Zimbabwe's population are now living below the poverty line. Out of originally 5 500 productive commercial farms, today less than 500 farms are in any way operational. So far the Zimbabwean government has targeted 6 897 farms, with a total area of almost 12 million hectares for what they term "resettlement".

The economy in Zimbabwe is one of the fastest shrinking in the world. Unemployment is officially over 70%. Inflation is running at 440%. Although on the official exchange 1 British Pound is equal to 814 Zimbabwean Dollars, on the Black-market it takes 14 000 Zimbabwe Dollars to buy 1 British Pound and approximately 20 000 Zimbabwe Dollars for 1 US Dollar.

90% of food aid is not reaching those in need. People in Zimbabwe have been bluntly told that they will not get any food aid unless they voted for the party of Robert Mugabe, ZANU-PF.

Life expectancy in Zimbabwe has plummeted to 34 years for men and 33 years for women. Nearly 34% of the adult population has been recorded as being HIV positive. There are 700 000 AIDS orphans in Zimbabwe.

In the 2002 report by the European Communities Court of Auditors, it was recorded that 89% of aid money from the European Union had been embezzled by Robert Mugabe and his cronies.

Amnesty International has documented over 1000 cases of torture by the Zimbabwe government.

Nearly half of the Members of Parliament belonging to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change have been assaulted, mostly by the police. Many opposition Members of Parliament have been arrested, some imprisoned, and several have been murdered. A quarter of the opposition Members of Parliament say that they have survived assassination attempts. Not only have opposition Members of Parliament been assaulted, but even their lawyers. For example Mr. Gabriel Shuma who met with his client, a Member of Parliament for the MDC. After meeting with his client, Mr. Shuma was siezed by the police, hooded, stripped, bound, assaulted, thrown down flights of stairs, and subjected to torture and abuse. He has since fled the country.

Approximately 4 million Zimbabweans have fled the country. It is reported that 1.1 million Zimbabweans now live in the United Kingdom. 1.2 million Zimbabweans have fled to South Africa. 100 000 Zimbabweans are now in Australia. Botswana, Zambia and even Mozambique have growing Zimbabwean refugee populations, and a million more are scattered around the world elsewhere.

The Education Minister in Zimbabwe recently declared all private schools racist and had them closed. This despite 90% of the pupils in these private schools being Black. Even Peter House, one of the foremost and most successfully integrated schools in Zimbabwe was closed and the principal imprisoned.

Mr. Roy Bennett, an opposition Member of Parliament for the MDC who had been overwhelmingly elected by his constituency, has been imprisoned under the most degrading conditions with hard labour. Roy Bennett's fluent knowledge of Shona made him a formidable debater in Parliament. Because of his steadfast opposition to the Marxist thuggary and lawlessness of Mugabe's ZANU-PF under years of harassment, slander and violence and enduring the unprecedented hostility of the ZANU government - he is now crammed into a small and filthy, disease ridden cell, forced to sleep on a concrete floor with 17 other inmates and subjected to degrading abuse.

Despite the lawlessness and tyranny in Zimbabwe, where even Supreme Court justices have been subjected to death threats and hounded out of office, where editors have been arrested and tortured, opposition newspapers blown up, journalists assaulted, arrested or murdered, farmers assaulted and murdered, and even thousands of human rights observers abducted, assaulted and tortured, the ANC government of South Africa continues to support the Mugabe regime.

Members of Parliament in Britain have also challenged the Queen over the honorary knighthood bestowed on Robert Mugabe, declaring that the whole honour system is disgraced by tyrants such as Mugabe. It is remembered that the Queen also bestowed an honorary knighthood on the Marxist dictator of Mozambique, Samora Machel, and the communist dictator of Romania, Nicoli Ceaucescu.

(All of the above facts were taken from the Victims of Communism, December 2004, newsletter of the Rhodesia Christian Group, P O Box 5307, Bishops Stortford, Herts., CM23 3DZ, England).